


The White Queen

by cynicalbaguette



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, i dont entirely keep up with the actual show so im doing whatever i want with the plot, idk who runs catco now last one i saw was snapper, watch kara and lena fall in love then watch me pour six cups of angst on them, yes the premise is weird and complicated but everything has an emotional purpose i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 07:20:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30001281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicalbaguette/pseuds/cynicalbaguette
Summary: Kara moves to National City to write the article of a lifetime, finding a perfect city and lands the perfect job. Society seems virtually flawless -- a miraculous recovery after what seemed to be a sudden outbreak of a zombie virus five years ago. The once-infected victims of The Outbreak, "Cured Ones" living in The Outskirts, were rumored to be everything from nightmarish monsters to nothing more than sane yet scarred people, waiting for the promised day of reintegration into the city that never seemed to draw closer. More recently, it was rumored that they had all died out or moved outwards towards the rest of the nation, leaving The Outskirts unoccupied. But what happens when Kara meets a certain green-eyed Cured One on a journalism assignment to the edges of the city?Inspired by the short animated film “Less Than Human”.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	The White Queen

**Author's Note:**

> proofreading is for weenies, immediately posting is for the strong
> 
> edit: i revoke my statement, i just realized I switch from past to present tense halfway through the chapter it appears that i am the weenie

National City stands proudly in the midday sun, glittering skyscrapers looming over The Outskirts, a testament to the resilience of its citizens. 

Kara walks reluctantly in the opposite direction.

She shrugs her camera bag up her shoulder, grumbling as bright white cement fades to a filthy gray under her feet and the shining city of glass and steel recedes at her back. She fixes her eyes on The Outskirts, the gray, twisted, stained structures of rust and stone protruding bitterly into the sky. Shudders.

Although Kara was grateful for the opportunity to write an incredible, career-defining article, she had to admit that she would rather be in the city, stuffing her face with potstickers, than walking closer to the wreckage and ruin of the eerie, dying outskirts of National City. 

The Outskirts, formed as a result of The Outbreak, was the memory of what was once National City University and its surrounding town. A mysterious ailment had spread five years ago, causing zombie-like symptoms -- violence, inhuman survival -- and the subsequent cure, which came as suddenly and mysteriously as the disease, had left the victims unable to pass on the sickness but suspended in a purgatory of a sound mind but a broken body and the ever-looming threat of relapse. The “Cured Ones”, as they were informally named, were confined to The Outskirts -- the edges of National City where the outbreak had occurred, where a civil war had waged. 

Despite the tragedy, National City had recovered magnificently. Entire neighborhoods were rebuilt, and life settled into something even better than normalcy, with employment and happiness at an all time high. There seemed to be nothing out of place within the bounds of the city -- barely a single person who upset the peace. It became a media sensation, the perfect place for journalists such as Kara to report on the makings of perhaps the world’s first utopia. 

The only thing that could ruin the perfect society was the fear of the Cured Ones, yet even that seemed to magically dissolve away before the perfection of National City -- it was said that before the Cured Ones could be reintegrated into society as promised at the end of The Outbreak, most had all died out or moved away. Some believed a few stragglers remained, relapsing and sinking back into their pre-cure insanity, while others believed they were gone for good. Either way, National City was free to remain in its pristine bubble. 

Kara’s thoughts are interrupted by an unpleasant splashing, plopping noise as her foot slips off the edge of the cement and into the soaked, muddy grass. She jumps back, swearing, as frigid water seeps into her socks.

“If Snapper hadn’t heard about me spilling coffee on Mike, I wouldn’t be out here in the actual armpit of civilization. Nia Nal, when I get my hands on you --”

Her sentence trails off into a short but exceedingly colorful string of curses as she scowls at the memory of Nia’s phone being shoved uncomfortably close to her face with the email of ‘Report on Outskirts. In person. Get pictures. Non negotiable.’ glowing on the screen, accompanied by Nia’s shrug and apology of, “Sorry. Snapper can sniff out a lie from a mile away and you know I can’t keep a poker face when Mike gets what’s coming to him. I’ll buy you sticky buns on Friday to make up for it.”

Kara’s bitterness is briefly quelled at the memory of tipping her coffee onto Mike’s desk as he whined at a nearby coworker to go out to dinner with him. The thought of his petulant sulking while mopping his desk up is almost enough to distract her from her shoe that insists upon squelching with each step.

She comes across a twisted, rusted barbed wire fence attended to by two guards who nod at her media badge, smile amicably, and drag the door open with the scream of metal against rusted metal.

As she enters The Outskirts, her grumbling fades away, falling silent to match the silence of the crumbling town. The street is lined with unkempt trees and buildings left scarred by war. Where the City was polished, the outskirts were a heaving, stumbling thing seemingly always smothered with heavy gray rain even under clear skies, treading water in time, the sort of place where its citizens would slip by with hoods up and heads down.

Yet there are no people in the streets. 

The road is unnaturally, unsettlingly empty, devoid of used cigarettes, lost coins, black, hardened gum -- the usual signs of life. Just rubble and ruin -- buildings half standing, half scattered across weed-infested sidewalks. Anything that could have been a trace of life had long since been blasted away.

Kara’s stride slows, steadies as gravel crunches beneath her feet, seeming to echo around the looming, staring, silent ghost town. She brings her camera up, takes a few photos of long-forgotten graffiti, slanting, gaping doorways with no doors, shattered windows, flinching at the suddenly ear splitting sound of the shutter. 

She finds herself entering the campus of National City University, wandering the pillars and intricate stone gargoyles turned prematurely to tragically beautiful ruins harkening back to their Greek and Roman predecessors. She spots an old scientific laboratory, its name indistinguishable under the scorch marks on the sign, somehow still standing amidst the quiet chaos of the rubble. 

Kara takes a quick photograph, and approaches the entrance.

The doors open with ease, swinging open without the burst of dust that Kara had been expecting. Kara breathes a sigh of relief, pulls a flashlight from her bag. A circle of light falls on a long hallway, doors and tattered posters lining either side. The laboratory is silent, but holds panic in its gaping doors, some hanging off its hinges, thrown open in the chaos to escape -- or maybe to break in. 

Yet as she ventures further inside it gets warmer somehow -- not only in temperature but in atmosphere. Everything is cleaner and more organized -- textbooks are no longer strewn across the ground but stacked neatly against walls. Broken glass is piled up in corners. As Kara steps closer, raising her camera, she notices a humming noise -- just barely loud enough for her to start walking around the room, testing if the noise changes levels, if she is not merely imagining things. 

A few steps towards the next door and a subsequent swell in the humming confirms the sound’s existence, and Kara begins to follow the crescendoing noise.

Eventually, with the humming growing ever stronger, Kara looks ahead to find light spilling out of a door left slightly ajar, painting a strip of tables and instruments gold.

The light is a familiar presence in the darkness, but a jarring occurrence in the abandoned building. A sense of dread fills Kara’s stomach as she hears her own breathing, the only sign of life in the entire campus, quicken and beg her to leave, but her fingers twitch on her camera, egging her towards the light. 

Kara mentally curses her curiosity and her background in journalism, plus her sister who had convinced her to take the job in National City for good measure, as she eases open the door. 

The room is relatively small, and looks as if it used to be a classroom. There are a few desks in the space and an old projector in the back. Tall windows lining one wall face the bulletin boards of another. Perhaps it had been used for lessons in the past, but now, it seemed to be a living space, and quite a cozy one at that. Battered desks layered with clothing and cups juxtapose the scientific instruments and protective equipment that had cluttered the rest of the laboratory, and there seem to be decorations scattered throughout the room, from small paintings to quaint curtains seemingly fashioned out of many different articles of clothing. The humming seems to be emanating from a device with wires that lead up into the ceiling -- a generator of some sort with enough power to sustain the few lightbulbs that illuminate the room. Kara is looking around, wide eyed, camera left hanging at her side in shock, when a door creaks open at the opposite end of the room.

Kara hastily steps back as she catches sight of dark hair and green eyes.

There is silence for a moment as Kara freezes, her heartbeat thudding in her ears, quickly processing the situation. A survivor. In The Outskirts. Somehow living in a wasteland, staying in an old laboratory, generating energy.

Kara sucks a breath in as light glances off of the exposed teeth of the dark haired woman -- a chunk of her cheek has been torn away but never healed, leaving the implication of a grimace on her face even as her lips are set into an impossibly neutral countenance.

Not just a survivor. A Cured One.

The woman at the door watches quietly. 

Kara’s instincts scream at her to run, to tear out of the laboratory, to forget about the entire day and to write nonsense for Snapper’s article. She feels her mouth open, tries to will herself to shout, to scream, to do anything as words start to tumble off her tongue of their own accord.

“Uh, hey. I like your curtains. I think I had that same shirt in high school.”

Kara suddenly wishes that the woman would just relapse, go insane, and put her out of her misery.

Yet as Kara’s cheeks flame red, the woman looks down. Kara’s eyes follow, confused.

“You’re tracking mud into my lab.”

Kara looks down at her filthy shoe, then glances over her shoulder to see a trail of mud and water leading into the darkness of the hallway as far as the eye could see. 

“Gosh, you’re right.” Kara feels embarrassment bleed into her fear as she becomes painfully aware of the cold and unpleasant wetness of her shoe. “Sorry, I’ll take care of that.”

The woman watches as Kara bends down, yanks the offending shoe from her foot while hopping on the other foot, and launches it down the hallway with all her might. 

Kara turns back around just in time to see the woman’s eyes track the shoe into the darkness, and shine with something akin to mirth at the disgusting squelch it produces at the end of its flight. Then the woman turns her attention to Kara, her expression softening, her head tilting expectantly, a polite signal for Kara to speak. When Kara hesitates, the woman reaches around the door, showing empty hands.

“I won’t hurt you. I’m just curious. Why are you here?”

Kara chews her lip for a moment, considers leaving the lab without another word for the last time, then inevitably gives in to her curiosity.

“I’m here on a journalism assignment, and I was just going to take pictures of some of the buildings but that seems so boring now that you’re here. You’re one of them, aren’t you? A Cured One? A lot of people in National City say you guys are dangerous, but you haven’t done anything yet, and I’m not sure if I believe them. I mean, you were a person once too, weren’t you? Did I mention I’m new around here? Even if you did relapse and become an evil zombie right now, I’m a pretty fast runner and I think there’s enough distance between us right now for me to make a run for it. Anyways,” Kara pauses to take an enormous breath. “Would you like to be interviewed?”

The woman looks at Kara’s face, flushed with fear, embarrassment, and the strain of saying so many words all at once, then at her uneven shoes, her sopping wet sock emblazoned with tiny pictures of dark green stegosauruses, then back at Kara’s face, who looks away from her exposed jaw hastily, choosing to direct her gaze directly upwards at a completely unextraordinary section of the blank, white ceiling.

The woman’s lips quirk up into a small smile. 

“I would be happy to be interviewed.”

Kara looks back down at the woman and smiles shyly, eyes still averted from her face. Something new, something soft and bright, flits across the woman’s eyes and colors what is left of her cheek with a light blush, unbeknownst to Kara who is elbow-deep in her bag, rummaging around for her tape recorder.

“Okay, well, first question. What’s your name?”

“Lena Luthor. And you are?”

“Kara Danvers.”

“Lovely to meet you, Kara Danvers. Please, do come inside.”

**Author's Note:**

> congrats everyone for getting to 15k!  
> feel free to bully me about my fic on twitter @SpaghetInAlaska


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